In Spring, With You
by Aloice
Summary: A Chinese migrant worker AU (or is it?) of Rin and Len. Two 15-year-olds leave their home village to pursue their dreams in the capital. A million things go wrong, but just a few go right as well. Warning for dark/heavy themes such as exploitation, class discrimination, sexism etc.
1. Winter

**A/N**

Welcome to Rin/Len hell, Aloice.

This story is going to be bad. It's going to be bad because I suck at prose, because I haven't written prose for years, because I'm new to the fandom, and because it touches upon a lot of very real and complex issues. Proceed with caution because things will get heavy - we'll talk about poverty, misogyny, different cultures, exploitation, and just life when it isn't really pretty. I've done some research and am trying to stay as true to how things actually are as I can, but I will most definitely make mistakes, so this is all a very delicate and flawed learning process.

Tentatively dedicated to my IRL uncle's family. My cousins are such inspirational goofs (and huge Korean/Japanese music and drama fans) for what they've gone through.

* * *

The smell of burning hay and donkey dung fill up the air.

I retreat further back into the safety and warmth of my floral blanket cocoon, groaning. " _Len_."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" My twin brother yells back apologetically through the open window and chilly air. Behind the rising, suffocating smoke, his figure is slightly blurry, but I can just barely make out his smile, his Northeastern winter blush, and his messy mop of light hair. He's shoo-ing and leading Josephine back into her little hut in the courtyard as he cleans up her mess. "I just have to do this before uncle comes back with friends. You know how it is. It's Chinese New Year Eve." A laugh enters his voice now, a nervous one. "Do you know when uncle's friends are coming?"

"In three hours or so," I respond, reluctantly looking away from the tiny TV to squint at the grandfather clock through the mouth of my little nest. "You better hurry. I'll start making dinner as soon as this song is done."

"Oh – do you know if EXO or BTS will be playing tonight? On the TV Gala, I mean?" He cranes his head awkwardly but eagerly towards the house, his eyes full of misguided hope.

"I doubt it, they're not Chinese, and geez, Len, you smell terrible." I make a playful face at him; he grimaces, and then deliberately reaches in through the window to pat at my head with his dirty hands. I scowl.

" – Still not as smelly as you!" A tease, and then a dance away. He always looks so adorable when he does things like that.

* * *

My name is Kagamine Rin, and I live in the backwater Chinese Northeast with my twin brother, Len, my aunt and uncle, a dozen chickens, a donkey, several acres of farmland and fruit trees, and no heating gas or running water.

It's a simple but hard life: our parents had passed away in a "workplace accident" in the Molybdenum mines half an hour down the road when we were around three or four, and we remember next to nothing about them. "Father always had a determined face and great drinking tolerance," Len would say sometimes, holding my hand as we hiked up dry and cracking tracks to reach our fruit trees on the top of the hill, but I know he's making it up. "And Mother always said you had the eyes of a prince," I would sometimes play along, if only because I know he would then stop to smile wistfully and ruffle my hair. The little bubbles of lies mean a lot to us.

Our uncle – our father's older brother – has been kind enough to take us in, to feed, clothe and shelter us, but he hasn't had enough energy to do much else, and it's hard to blame him. Our parents had borrowed a decently large sum of money from him just before they died, an amount that they for obvious reasons will never pay back, and he's also struggling with his own cirrhosis and black lung, not to mention paying for the university tuition of our cousin, a young man currently studying to be an engineer. The man _tries_ , bless his heart; he has passed all the cousin's study materials, clothes and electronic equipment down to Len and me, but I'm not quite what you'd call university material, and Len doesn't quite want to leave me alone.

I still remember the day – uncle standing by the rusting iron gate, Len leaning by the crumbling stone walls just a few feet next to him, both of them smoking local cigarettes. My heart had sunk, and I had hidden myself behind the red house door, spying them unseen. Len never smoked unless he felt coerced and was also in a bad mood. He knew I hated the smell of it.

"Congratulations, Len," my uncle had said, patting Len's shoulder and lighting another cigarette. "Huludao No. 1 School. That's where your cousin went."

"I know," Len said sullenly, not looking at him. He exhaled slowly, blinking several times in a row as if he wasn't quite prepared for this conversation. I covered my mouth with my left hand in shock, forgetting for a second the wailing of the hot water kettle behind me. Len hadn't told me that he had gotten into the good school when I had failed the same test.

"You're smarter than Rin. A boy, too. You could get out, learn a trade, settle in the cities. I can support you through high school, and then you can try to apply for a scholarship. I will make a good match for Rin, don't you worry."

"I know," Len repeated slowly, and more than anything, I was alarmed by the monotone quality of his voice. My brother had a way to speak as if he was singing, and his voice was usually steady and incredibly sweet. Finally smelling something burning behind me, I yelped and scrambled to take care of the kettle.

"… More like your father. She's never –"

"We are twins, it's just a few points, just luck, I'll work –"

"… An apprentice of the hairdresser in the next town. Rin is lovely and has a good attitude. She'll make a good living."

"She doesn't know anyone there," my brother snapped, apparently suddenly angry. "And she's too young for those relationships, let alone getting engaged."

I stilled. They had brought up more things in the past three minutes than I had thought about my life for the past three years. _Engaged?_

Silence. As I placed the kettle back onto the shelf, I idly realized that Len had spoken to an elder out of turn. Usually the situation would call for a slap, a stern censoring, or worse. Instead, our uncle sighed deeply. "Kagamine Len, don't raise your voice at me."

"I know," my brother said again, his voice back to its normal volume. "I'm sorry, uncle. I'll set up the firewood for the bed-stoves tonight." He stalked off, past our uncle, past Josephine the donkey and the screeching chickens, and then past me within the house, not even looking at me as I scurried to wash the vegetables. That night, he didn't spread out his blanket bedroll beside me before I fell asleep, and before I could talk to him the next morning, he had gone out with the village men on an expedition to hunt for precious metal ores in the mountains.

* * *

I love my brother.

We are not the only pair of twins in the village, but whenever anyone speaks of "the twins," it's bound to be us. We are the pretty twins, the singers, the poor orphan darlings. Len is younger than me by less than a half hour, but deep in the mountains, he's the knight and fighter looking out for the princess. It's not like I _enjoy_ appearing defenseless or weak – quite the contrary – but I enjoy being spoiled as much as every other young girl, and it's flattering to know that Len loves me best when all the girls of the village have a crush on him.

We have similar looks and similar interests. Hair too blond for ordinary Chinese but not blond enough to be actually golden. Unhealthy obsessions with Korean and Japanese music, from anime soundtracks to vocaloids and youth bands. A boundless love for nature and the land, dreams of seeing the world, a craving to climb up steel skyscrapers and take selfies in front of sparkling marble monuments. Len wants to visit European and Japanese castles. I want to one day visit Hollywood.

Dreams are childish dreams – their fakeness are ever apparent when we squat to use ancient non-flushing toilets or spend hours under the sun harvesting peanuts – so more often than not, we simply comfort and hold onto each other. My memories are full of waiting for Len or catching up to him, racing dirt bikes with him on the way to school or home, plastering cheap stickers of musicians together onto our walls, merging our bedrolls together in the bitter cold of January when even the steamy bed-stoves are not enough, wrapping our arms and bodies around each other in futile attempts to warm each other up. There's a mild arrhythmia to his heartbeat that skips once in a while like a musical semiquaver. We learned that word a year ago from a visiting teacher who kept complaining that only idiots wouldn't teach sheet music to the two of us.

* * *

Len didn't end up going to high school. I didn't take the bus to the next town to meet the promised hairdresser or dress up to woo some man I needed to marry. We sat in the house, worked in the fields, sold goods on the weekly market, watched TV. Len groomed Josephine and harvested corn as I fixed the holes on our uncle's socks and picked date fruits with our aunt.

Len had to know that I knew – he avoided me often after that day, refusing to talk to me about things, even going so far to always turn the other way when we rolled into bed to sleep. The whole thing bewildered as much as it hurt – I'd never known how to function without him, and I realized that he was right in claiming that I needed him, although he probably also needed me. If Len had gone to No. 1 while I went to No. 2 or became an apprentice, we would not see each other for perhaps months at a time, and even thinking about the possibility made my head hurt.

I thought about breaking the ice – _I miss you, Len, I didn't hear anything, nothing is more important to me than just being able to talk to you_ – yet I was also upset that he had decided to block _me_ out when he couldn't have known how I felt about that conversation, so I held my tongue. And he did crack eventually, one evening in November, as uncle told him to help me out with my final courtyard shower of the year. While we did not have running water, we did have two clumsily installed solar panels from the government, and they allowed for the occasional luxurious shower at home when the outside temperature wasn't absolutely brutal. As Len set up the apparatus for me and I hid behind the faded sheet of plastic we used in place of a shower curtain, he stopped and spoke up.

"Are you mad at me, Rin?"

I opened my mouth, and nothing came out. He had been a little slow in setting up, so it was already quite dark and cold in the courtyard, and as I shivered in the autumn winds, he sounded like he was about to cry. There stood my little brother behind a sheet of plastic, helping me to not appear too dirty in this donkey-dung-and-landfill back country and waiting to guide me back into the house with a tiny flashlight, and I just wanted to run out to hug him. _Don't be stupid, Rin._ I reached for my shirt slowly. "No, and why on Earth would you think that?"

He shrugged. Although I couldn't _really_ see him, I might as well had been looking at him folding his arms together uncomfortably, the picture of a sad innocent puppy. "We haven't been talking."

I stared at the plastic sheet in utter disbelief. " _You_ were not talking to _me_."

"Oh." The idea seemed to be new to him. "I'm sorry."

I nearly shoved the sheet towards him in exasperation. "Len, _please_."

"I haven't been thinking straight," he conceded sheepishly, and I envisioned him standing there like a potato. Even as I piled layers upon layers of clothing on myself, I felt lighter, relieved – at least Len wasn't truly mad at me. "I just… want to be with you, but I don't want to – uh – hold up your future."

If my eyes could have rolled into the heavens, they could have, but instead I walked out and put both of my hands on his shoulders. He winced audibly; my hands were freezing cold from the recent shower.

" _Len_ ," I breathed; he swallowed. "You could have gone to No. 1. You could have gone to _college_. _I'm_ holding _you_ back, not the other way round." Len as an engineer, a teacher, a doctor or businessman; he had confessed once to loving the black tuxedo look of young business magnates from Korean dramas – although I doubted that Len had the shrewdness to succeed as a company chairman, he likely could have obtained a white collar job somewhere. "You can't be with me forever –" now the audible wince was mutual, but I pushed on. Some things just needed to be said. "I'll be fine. The village is fine. It's not Hollywood, of course, but I've been fine the past fifteen years, I'll –"

"Is that what you really want, though? Can you tell me that?" He whispered, leaning in so our faces were nearly touching. "Rin, I don't think you understand how talented you are. I know this is sappy, I know that I'm your brother, but I'd _hate_ to see you married off to a farmer or a pig breeder and, I dunno, just spend the rest of your life styling hair and raising kids. Those hairstyles are _terrible_ , I wouldn't pay them to let them style your hair like that, you look and sing better than half of _Girl's Generation_ –"

I couldn't help it; fresh out of a freezing shower several feet away from a donkey hut, with wet hair all tangled around and above my face and smelling of the cheapest fake shampoo and bath lotion in town, I absolutely _owned_ flair and grace. I laughed quietly as he glared at me. "Len, the only people who likes to hear me sing are people from this village. We have no training, no connections, terrible Northeastern _peasant accents_ –"

"You sing like an angel," he insisted, my pigheaded little brother, "no one thought Li Yuchun or Jane Zhang could make it either. Videos of migrant workers singing Wang Feng's life inspiration rock songs have gone viral. You just need exposure. A beautiful flower from a village covered in soot and garbage –"

"Very attractive, Len, very attractive." I poked at his face. He scowled but stood his ground. "Just find a job in the city, darling brother, and buy me a ticket to Tiananmen or EXO's next concert when you can. That's my entire bucket list for this life."

"I can do that for you in a few months."

"No, you can't."

"Yes. And then you have to listen to me and pursue your dreams for once."

I had laughed it off then, considering the whole thing to be impossible, just another display of Len's relentless idealistic naivete. But, by God, I was wrong.

* * *

Len is abnormally cheery as we snuggle up in our bed rolls to watch replays of the Gala. It's just a few hours past midnight; some stragglers are still setting off small firecrackers outside, and the house is filled with cigarette smoke and the sounds of adult men playing mahjong and cursing the bad harvest in the other room. Doubtlessly some families are now in debt and need the village's support. If they had come with the hopes that uncle might have some money to spare, they're in for a disappointment.

"No EXO, but I heard there's Henry Huo," Meanwhile, Len announces, apparently oblivious, flipping through the channels and glancing anxiously back at the satellite "soup bowl" in the courtyard. "Please tell me the chickens didn't poop on it or something."

"The chickens haven't been able to fly out since I repaired the fence," I comment drowsily, tired from all the cooking and cleaning. At least uncle hasn't made me drink a shot glass of that awful hard Chinese liquor like he's made Len. The thing had smelled like polluted river water mixed with methanol, which probably isn't even that far away from the truth. _Oh sweet merciful gods, please don't let Len's liver die_ , I pray to no god in particular, as someone slams on the table and curses out loud from the other room. _I'd have to clean up more of that stuff in the morning_. "I liked Henry's first song."

"You, and everyone else," Len nods sagely. He seems to have found the correct channel. "He's the next big thing. Hey, Rin, don't fall asleep on me."

"I'm tiiiiiired."

"Hey, Rin," he leans in, gently pulling on a strand of my hair. How is he not exhausted to the bone yet? "Let's go to Beijing tomorrow."

I raise an eyebrow above half-closed eyes. "Hmm, no."

"Riiiin." He's doing that singing voice thing again. "Rin, I'm serious."

"Not funny, Len," I mumble, stretching a leg out within my bed roll. The bed-stove, for once, is comfortably hot – but not scalding – underneath me, and I desperately want to fall asleep before the temperatures change again. If I close my eyes, I can forget the smoke and inevitable scattered mahjong pieces and shattered glass, instead reinventing myself as a golden-haired princess or idol, filming the next big blockbuster or waiting for the perfect prince in a well-watered and flowering meadow. Or even in the heat of battle… in the heat of everything… kissing a golden-haired boy that looks just as cute as Len…

"Rin. I've got the tickets." Len's voice is slightly trembling now.

I blink. There, swimming into view, are two tickets, small and pink. I blink again; the Chinese characters fall into place like individual peanuts emerging from underneath the dark earth. Something stirs in my stomach; _hunger_ , I register belatedly. _Huludao to Beijing. Youth seat. Depart at 8:30 in the morning._ I'm suddenly wide awake. " _How?"_

"My treat," Len sings, more than satisfied with himself.

"Len. That stuff must have cost like, _a year of your No. 1 high school tuition_. Or something. I don't know." I'm suddenly flustered and confused – almost feverish. The tickets are throwing glare onto me like BMW headlights, and I feel more naked than I've ever felt in my entire life. Everything about the situation just screams _wrong_ , yet it's making my heart race. _And saying no not because of not wanting but / because, you thought, what else can it be, so much / wanting, except wrong._ "You can't – "

"There's a EXO concert tomorrow evening," Len continues, "get up early so we can make it."

"But –"

"Do it for me. Let's have a moment in spring. Like that song. _In spring_." Len places his hand-me-down MP3 player between us, and draws a little heart around the tiny thing with his hands. "We depart at dawn."


	2. Fault

**A/N**

Aloice returns with something a bit shorter and slightly (?) more dark.

1) NO PLEASE DO NOT CALL THAT WELL DRILLING NUMBER IT'S JUST A NUMBER THAT I MADE UP ON THE SPOT (ALTHOUGH IT WOULD BE A LEGIT CHINESE NUMBER)

2) Len's translated Chinese name, 连, means "connection" while Rin's Chinese name 铃 means "bell" or "ringtone." I mention this because I ref Len's name this chapter, and people will talk about their names later.

3) Len had bacterial meningitis (uncle wasn't completely BS-ing around). Rin thought that he had made a full recovery, but more on that later.

OH AND SOME PICTURES OF IRL PLACES SO YOU CAN GET A BETTER IDEA OF WHAT I'M WRITING ABOUT. These are all on imgur because I can't link things afigskghsd.

O6n70KB - a cottage with a donkey cart. (and is that the butt of a donkey right next to the cottage...)

5ih9kDh - village with hay, fields and a donkey.

XTIdou5 - a child sitting on the bed-stove in a cottage. (No, that child is not me.) Note the colorful blanket rolls in the cupboard. At night during winter, everyone sleeps next to each other wrapped up in those like sushi rolls. Len and Rin's home probably is a good bit less dirty than this (Rin cleans obsessively) but not really any better furnished.

Thank you so much for the lovely reviews, and a special call out to Piriluk for beta-ing this chapter and just being an all around sweetheart! I dunno what I'd be doing in this fandom (or this week, in general) without you -blows kiss-

* * *

Len stretches up on his toes to say goodbye.

He has a special bond with Josephine, that boy; the last time I left this village, it had been because Len was deathly sick. He had been fine in the morning – just a little stiff, a little tired, clinging weakly to my skirt and refusing to get out of bed – but by the afternoon he was in a feverish delirium, and as the sun started to set, uncle had hauled him up and dumped him on top of Josephine's wooden cart like a load of corn, instructing me on how to control the donkey and speak in town.

"We need to get him to the hospital tonight," the old man had stated matter-of-factly, the lines on his forehead deepening like the furrows in the fields, "Or he might end up mentally retarded, deaf, or worse. This shit is serious. We don't have money – I'm asking your aunt to go around for some loans – but you gotta sweet talk them, baby girl, okay? I'm old ass peasant stock, I don't know how them town folks work, but you gotta get them to look at your brother, money or no."

Having spent the day futilely trying to help the old village healer, I had not known whether to screech, to cry, or to run; instead I had meekly said yes and thrown a cool towel on my brother's forehead, trying to not look at Len's pale face or glazed eyes. Uncle had said I shouldn't hold his hand, that illnesses were contagious and _would you want to be crying that your twin had left you when they were right there next to you_ , and I had said no, I didn't, just tell me what to do. So I had led Josephine out of the door, out of the village through the dirt road, and then nearly all the way into the swamped and gawking hospital lobby, a few hours later.

"You saved my life," Len is saying now to the young donkey, loading up her feed tray and fondly caressing her head. He's going to smell the entire trip. "Thank you for that."

"Hey, thank me, too," I tease him, checking my bags for anything I might have potentially missed. The 5 am air is thin and beyond chilly – even in our colorful, fat floral winter coats, we are still shivering like mad, and Len's winter blush is so prominent that he might as well be drunk. _We probably are, leaving home like this_. "You were throwing up all over me while crying that I was dead."

Len smiles, but his eyes darken somewhat, and I'm suddenly afraid that I have misspoken. "I was sick, okay? Dying without you is not a good place to be."

 _And I couldn't touch you or stay with you in that hospital once they hooked you up to everything. I had no idea if they were trying to save you or if they just wanted to placate a sobbing and penniless eight-year-old peasant girl who barely knew how to read. Traditional medicine I could understand. Western medicine with those metallic syringes and terribly smelling gases I could not. Plus, if you had died or been disabled, no one would have really given a shit. All you would have had left would be me, crying as I tried to reach into an oblivious darkness for the memory of your glowing eyes._

"We left the village together then," I murmur semi-defensively, sidling closer to him, hoping to diffuse the mood. "You might not have known, but we did. And we're definitely leaving together now."

Len's face softens, and he turns away from the donkey to gently cradle my head instead. At least his hands haven't completely frozen yet. I hug him close, hungrily inhaling the scent of him and home, donkey dung, loose chicken feathers and the smoldering warmth of the hearth. He's the one person I can't bear to lose.

"And thank you for that."

* * *

We make it to the mouth of the village by foot this time. Josephine is uncle's property, after all (he calls her _Small Black_ , in contrast to her dam _Big Black_ , who died quite a few years ago), and he needs her for work. We are mostly quiet as we walk past everyone's fields, sticking to the right side of the half-dirt half-concrete road. A few morning trucks have passed us by, but not many have cared to say hello. People are still half asleep at this hour. Every once in a while we spot an early riser on a motorcycle or a young boy scrambling past weeds, dung and loose stones to spraypaint advertisements on crumbling stone cottage walls: **CHEAP & EFFICIENT FERTILIZER. CERTIFICATION AND LOANS. WELL DRILLING 130-436-7866.**

While I'm almost comforted by the silence – I'm tired, sleepy, and too afraid of going anywhere with just Len – Len's lack of words is more alarming. He's walking ahead of me with a hat on and a few big bags, and I'm slowly realizing that he's not just taking me on an "ordinary" trip, regardless of what that even means. He's carrying too much. He's planned this for a while. And uncle hadn't even gotten up to see us off.

I try not to think about it. I rearrange my white-and-yellow head scarf, wrap my arms tightly around myself, and watch my breaths turn into fog in the cold. It's Chinese New Year. The heavens will be good. Everyone calls Len resourceful. And he obviously only means me well.

Time, though, is not kind to a young girl's paranoia. The road stretches on and on in front of us, seemingly without end, even as I vaguely remember the path. The wind's picking up, howling this side of the mountain as it rips through the air. There's nothing but brown dead farmland and the occasional transmission tower on either side of us. Even the mountain that gives the village its name, usually a solid pile of black and towering, is hard to see, obscured by morning clouds. I can't even pray for fortune to the mountain goddess of legend…

"Hold my hand, Len," I blurt out, seized by a sudden flash of panic. He turns around and blinks, but takes my left hand into his right without a word as he reads the expression on my face. His left arm must be dying from all the load.

"Shhhh, Rin, shhhh," he coos, ever the sunshine optimist, although I can tell he isn't over the moon either. At least his squeeze of his hand is actually reassuring. "If you want, we can align our steps to our heartbeats."

"You're such a romantic."

A true romantic would probably have explained better my fears on that morning, painted a truly touching picture of two teenagers walking away from the only home they've ever known, but I sucked at literature and Len doesn't like showing me what he doodles in that little notebook of his, so I'm left just with that trace of warmth from his hold, a connection of promise between us, just like his name.*

* * *

We wait huddled together like penguins for fifteen minutes before a bus finally arrives, crashing down from the hill.

"Where you going?" the woman in white asks, grinning as she helps Len unload our luggage. She looks about fifty, has too much bad-quality rouge and eyeshadow on, and probably hails from one of the villages downstream of the bus route. "You've got some muscles, boy."

 _Does he?_ Len's coughing and panting as he unloads close to the exhaust pipe. I internally pick out a few choice words for the engineering design as I settle down near the end of the bus. "Uh. We're going to the North Train Station."

"Thirty-five, please," the woman responds automatically, and I reach into my bag, grimacing at the amount of money. If what I have heard about spending levels in the cities are true, I really, really hope Len has miraculously saved a few hundred bucks from somewhere. _But if he does have a few hundred bucks, wouldn't he spend it on something more productive? He could have gone to school, or helped uncle pay for next season's seeds, or bought another few packs of coal. Or literally anything._

I yell at Len. "Come on," I shout past a baby crying in her mother's arms. The mother shoots a dirty look at me, but moves her bags of groceries to let Len pass through. "I've saved us two seats. The bus is leaving."

Len runs past me and practically collapses into the seat. The seat groans and nearly collapses under him. We trade seats.

"Are you okay?" I offer him my shoulder. He falls on it, coughs again, and shuffles his weight so he will not nearly crush the chair again.

"Yeah," he mumbles. "Just – didn't sleep well, and don't think I've fully recovered from last week's work. My left arm wants to kill me."

"Sorry." I try to massage it.

"Not your fault."

Someone's blasting one of those happy-go-lucky Communist songs that no one truly knows the lyrics of at the front of the bus. A few men are smoking and chattering amongst themselves, laughing and sighing over one gig or another. At least the bus is still mostly clean, if falling apart. At the next hill, Len is forced to clutch onto me as I clutch onto the seat in front of me. Without seat belts we're all just constantly thrown around the place.

"Are you feeling sick? We have water." I know _I_ would be, if I were in his shoes. I'm feeling borderline sick already.

He laughs weakly, trying to regain his balance. "Did you pack any apples?"

"Oh. Yeah." I rummage through the bag and hand him one. He bites into it once – swallows – then seems to just stare at it like the anime symbol of sin that it is. "What, is the apple rotten?"

"Nooooooooooo," he drawls, and suddenly becomes a lot more cheerful as he wolfs down the rest of the apple. "Sorry about being a downer, Rin. This is supposed to be a fun trip."

"Did you do something to annoy Uncle? Is that why he didn't send us off?" I wonder aloud. Len's smile falters and becomes decidedly plastered. He seems to ponder over his options, then settles on one unwillingly, closing his eyes as he begins. I draw in a breath, realizing that I have - rather unintentionally – hit a nerve.

"Well, it's a part of my agreement with him. About us, I mean."

"Us?" I echo – he doesn't reply – and my eyebrows are beginning to rise. It's starting to dawn on me – his excessive amount of luggage, his increasing amount of questions for me as Chinese New Year drew closer and closer, his anxiety and avoidance. He's feeling guilty. "Kagamine Len, what on _Earth_ did you agree to?"

"I told him that I'll take you into the city. That we'll settle there and find some kind of life for ourselves." He actually looks green now, and a pleading edge has entered into the sweetness I'm so familiar with. "Rin, don't tell me I'm being –"

"Where? In Beijing?" I can't believe my ears. The men at the front of the bus have turned to stare at us – the baby is wailing again – but I need to know. I've always known that Len is naïve to a fault, but not anywhere close to this extent. "What do you want us to –"

"I'll work in the factories – I've arranged something with an old friend of Father's – and I'll support you to do music." He sounds embarrassed by his own plan. An appreciative male whistle is heard from the front. I'm just staring at my twin brother as if he is a five-year-old instead of a fifteen-year-old. "It'll be f-"

"Okay, _you're_ stupid, but I know Uncle isn't stupid. Why would he ever let you do something like this?" I demand, abruptly dropping his hand. His eyes widen as he shrinks back, wounded. Perhaps the TV doctors are right, and boys do actually mentally age 80% slower than girls during adolescence. "It's cute when it's talk, but not when –"

"I… told him that I'm old enough to be your guardian now," Len mumbles, fiddling with his fingers and looking down at the ground. "I'm old enough to be a man, to support you, to care for your future, and I'm more your blood than he is –"

"Get away from me, you patriarchal fuck," I curse, incredulous at what I'm hearing. A small chorus of gasps rises around me – around us – but I dare the adults on the bus to meet my eyes, and none quite do. _My twin brother of all people has done this to me._ Had he done this with uncle while I was asleep, two men with their cigarettes, gambling cards, and trash bootleg liquor? Was my aunt a part of this at all, or did she also think – subservient and basically illiterate as she was – that everything in the cities was pure and good? Did my cousin not defend me, or did he also think this was for the best once I failed my exams to get into the No. 1 high school? I feel sick, small, and very, very angry. If I could have lifted Len and thrown him out of the window I'd just opened for him to get some air, I would.

Len coughs sadly and looks away defiantly. There's a blaze in his eyes that's drawing fault lines. "Then get off the bus. You know you can. The next stop is the hospital. You have enough money to get back, or I can give it to you. You know the way."

"You –" I'm too mad for words. "Give me my chair back."

As I curl up in my chair to cry, I hear the sound of something cracking, and then nothing. No one moves. I am leaving Len to sit in the epicenter of his own wreckage.


	3. Thaw

**A/N**

Chinese rock musician (and the trophy husband of supermodel Zhang Ziyi) Wang Feng's "In Spring" gives the fic its title, and his "Life in Full Bloom" is referenced in this chapter. Both are real songs. LIFB is at pjTDTmef5-c on Youtube. I'll save the Youtube link to my favorite version of IS for another time because uh, spoilers.

And as much as it sucks to have to stand/sit/curl up next to the hot water dispenser (because you don't get to sleep), it sucks more to have to stand right next to, or in some cases, inside the toilet. At least the toilets have gotten a lot more... sanitary during my lifetime. I think. I pray to the train gods.

The last year of the dragon was 2012. So I suppose, for this fic, the twins were born in 1997.

* * *

What little Len and I do know about our parents, we know through their music.

Uncle was the eldest son, the practical one. Down-to-earth, gruff and loyal, he toiled in the fields, cared for his parents when they succumbed to sickness and age, and helped send his younger siblings to school. We had an aunt once, he said; she was the youngest, pretty and idealistic, but she had run off with a Mongolian man at the age of seventeen and never came back. "I'd like to see her again," uncle would say ruefully, poking moodily at the cinders under the stove, "but if she didn't even come back for your dad's funeral, she sure as hell wasn't going to come back to visit a wooden fuck like me."

Our father was the middle child – intelligent, handsome, coolly charismatic, compassionate, every girl's secret lover (gee, _I wonder who Len takes after_ ) – and everyone in the village had expected him to accomplish great things. He had successfully gotten into college, graduated from college, too, and married a girl from the cities, so everyone had counted him amongst the success stories. What they didn't expect – what they certainly did not approve of – was a developing obsession with music, and the neglect of everything important in life in pursuit of that one passion. For years, the married couple drifted from city to city, trying to produce a record or live off live performance fees, borrowing extensively from their relatives – and for years, they never achieved anything.

A final deathbed plea from a despairing grandfather had summoned mother and father back into the vicinity of the village. However, they had practically drunk and gambled themselves to death before they met their real deaths in an industrial accident.

All those things were not secrets to anybody.

"Your singing," Uncle once sighed – _how many years has it been?_ – staring at us wistfully as Len and I danced and sang in front of the TV, "It reminds me of your parents. What a pair of songbirds."

I had thought the whole thing a compliment until a livid aunt pulled the two of us aside later that evening and informed us of the disgrace that had been _that pair of songbirds_.

We never watched or did music things in aunt's presence again.

* * *

"You know," I accuse, clumsily attempting to wipe away my tears with the backs of my hands. They just keep falling and falling – and I find myself missing everything, missing home, missing uncle and aunt, missing my dead parents, missing my twin who's really sitting just a few feet away from me. _I just want something to hold onto, something that would love me, trust me, and not let me go._ "You know it's all a dead end. You know I don't want this."

Len tilts his head. The bus is almost full now, the roads wider. Some of the passengers at the front are gossiping amongst themselves about CNY store deals. ( _Haier fridges! CRVs! Hear, hear_.) We are starting to enter the provincial city – and there they emerge almost from a dream, the brightly colored apartment blocks and billboards, the beautiful sleek down feather jackets, the never-ending blaring of horns on the streets. I find myself unable to look away, even as I feel the fight-or-flight burn in my bones. _This is not your world_ , a voice is screaming in my ears – but why is it screeching and crying? _These are not your dreams._

"You always hum under your breath when you're with me. You always hold onto that TV remote long after everyone else's fallen asleep. You love it, you know it, you can't lie –"

"I can't _sing_ ," I argue, seizing his hands and pulling him towards me, my voice too feeble for my taste, despite my desperate attempt to power through the sobs. His breath is too sweet and warm right next to my face, but I pray that mine is the same brand of intoxicating to him too. "I need to work or get married. I don't want to become a failure or disgrace, Len. Don't make my decisions for me."

Len sighs, the same kind of defeated tone as uncle, falling away from me as if all fight has gone out of him, and that suddenly wounds me more than anything he's already said or done. _Do you have to give up on me, one way or another?_

"Fine. But you need to get out of the village. The men who have expressed interest in you all only care for your youth and looks, and if you stay behind – working or not – you can't refuse them forever. Uncle will be pressured, and you're too kind to watch him suffer for your sake. Stay with me, Rin. All I want to be is a good brother and guardian."

"You could have gone to high school." I don't try to add _you could sing with me_. As idealistic as Len is, even he doesn't seem to think of that as a possibility.

"I only scored five points higher than you on the exams," he points out, wincing as he tries to stand up from the ruins of the chair. I still don't help him. "I would have been placed into the worst class. And you know how many kids they send to college a year."

"One." I'm stubborn. "It could well be you."

"Oh, darling Rin, and who's going to pay for it? Uncle? Nah, it'd have to be you. How many heads of hair would you have to style in three years to pay for four years of your brother's college?" He answers his own question before I can make up an answer. "The answer is that we can't afford it. The county's scholarship fund dried up years ago. They say the clerk's daughter is studying in New Zealand now."

I'm not about to give up without a fight. "But who are these _father's friends_ that you were talking about –"

"Factory people, okay? Come on, Rin, give our parents some credit. They failed, but that doesn't mean they didn't try. If you hate this so much, you can always go back – we haven't left the province yet."

He spreads his arms wide, and I'm suddenly reminded of that drama symbolism, the melancholy young man on the crucifix. _But Len's no angel. Neither of us are. We might die for this world's sins but no one would weep for us, call for love or resurrection. In this world, dead is dead is dead._

"Sorry about being a patriarchal fuck, Rin. Like you, I don't want to become a failure. I'd just like to think that I have a little bit more faith."

* * *

It is nearly noon. Len and I settle down together on the front steps of the train station, eating apples and tea eggs from plastic bags. The imagery is all kinds of ironic – there's a huge crimson-and-gold CNY celebration banner hanging just above us, a pair of intertwining glittering dragons. We still have an hour before departure. I have just barely convinced Len to not get food from the fried chicken chain.

"But you _want_ it," he insists, apparently genuinely troubled. "I saw you salivating. We can afford something luxurious on Chinese New Year's Day. They even have a discount."

"Gross," I retort, even though he is right. I've dreamt about eating American-style fried chicken ever since I was twelve. All I want in my next life is to be a pop star with an endorsement deal with KFC. "Haven't you heard of all the food safety scandals? Have an egg. It's a lot harder to fuck up tea eggs."

He looks at me suspiciously. "How many have you eaten?"

"Enough. You've been carrying the bags. Eat."

Even if people noticed a pair of underage children staring rather gloomily into the distance without supervision, they haven't said anything. There are a lot of migrant children now, and even more stereotypes about them – _depressed_ , _criminally minded_ and _easily manipulated_ if you want the bad ones, and _courageous_ and _independent_ if you want the good ones. Len and I don't intend on ever becoming criminals, but Len's hard crystalline eyes and Northeastern hot-blooded blush can be intimidating. Perhaps if I had been sitting in the station alone, someone would have approached me, but Len's presence has discouraged that, and as much as I have called him a patriarchal fuck, I am begrudgingly glad that I have a brother instead of a sister.

A train all but wakes up everything in a three-mile radius as it leaves the station. I try hard not to flinch. Len is staring at something on the streets.

"Does it scare you, the cities?" I venture, half trying to gauge his mood, and half because I don't want to feel alone on a day like this. "How – _sterile_ it is? The white concrete, the asphalt streets, the glass windows. The trees all look like they're dying. It's one thing to watch those things on TV, and another to… feel them."

Len nods slowly, not turning to look at me. He groans as he peels the eggshell: he is peeling badly and a little bit of egg white has come off, attached to a shell piece. He hesitates briefly before devouring the whole thing, shell piece included.

"I mean, the smoke is pretty similar, right? Truck and tractor exhaust, car exhaust, it all smells the same. But city people don't care about you. They just care about whatever they need to do." He laughs dryly. "Bet you think human relationships are organic."

"Kagamine _Len_ ," I drawl, passing him the water bottle as a young woman enters the station (in this weather) with 5-inch black heels and a flowing satin dress, "a gentleman of connections."

"Kagamine _Rin_ , the ringtone of my life." He pretends to hold an imaginary mobile phone by his ear. "Hello? Yes, it's Kagamine Len, your model Northeastern peasant –"

"Stop." Now he's just meme-ing me. "How long's the train?"

"Nearly four hours. We might need a plastic stool because we've got seatless tickets." His smirk turns into a frown. "For –"

"– You," I finish before he can claim something else for me. "So you can, uhh, just hold it in your hands along with the rest of the luggage if there's no space on the train."

He scowls.

"I love you too, little brother."

"If only my big sister ever truly cared about my well-being."

"You are fineeeeeee."

There's a crooked smile in the lines of his face.

"Do you want to listen to something?" Len inquires, his mouth full of egg while digging haphazardly into his bags. His face is so adorable that I have to resist an urge to hug him. Not today. _Not when he's been this kind of fuck_. "Some more Wang Feng, or –"

"Yeah, something inspirational is cool," I agree, "Not _In Spring_ , though, can we get something a bit less morbid? He's always singing about dying and then getting buried somewhere. I'd like to live to ripe old age, thank you very much."

A family of three in fur coats glides by. Len stares after them longingly for a solid minute before taking out the hand-me-down mimic Sony. _Stop dreaming, Len. I wouldn't even look good in that kind of fabric._ "Let's try _Life in Full Bloom_ , then."

I hum along, and he taps the rhythm. We're a natural duo. We get more than a few are-you-performing-for-money glances from passersby before we pack up to get going.

 _I want life in full bloom / Just like spreading my wings in the full wide skies_

 _Just like sailing through the endless wilds / To possess the power to shatter all bonds_

 _I want life in full bloom / Just like standing tall upon the zenith of a rainbow_

 _Just like sailing through the glimmering milky way / To possess the power to be extraordinary_

* * *

"Do you want some _instant noodles_?" Len proposes, his grin just a little too wide on his face. My hands graze over his cheek in what is half a pat and half a slap.

We're occupying the only spaces available on the train – the space right beneath the hot water dispenser. We haven't eaten a proper meal all day, yet hundreds of people must have filled their bowl noodles right under our noses in the past hour, and my stomach has taken good notice.

"It's like, ten yuan a bowl, Len," I whine. "We could get like, a _dozen_ eggs."

"Not even as a Chinese New Year treat? At that rate you might as well turn into a hen yourself, eating all those eggs. Ow, I'm sorry, don't slap me."

"Is there food tonight, at least?" I ask without hope, shifting my weight in a futile attempt to make myself more comfortable. The girl standing right next to me curls her upper lip in slight disapproval before backing off a few feet. _Jeez, I'm not sick or something. Touching me won't kill you_. "Where are we even staying –"

"There is the concert –"

" _Fuck_ the concert, Len. You don't even have the tickets, right? You were hoping that we could buy them at the door. That's not how that works. Just take us to the 'family friends' already."

He deflates at me calling his bluff. I wish I felt a bit sadder about the whole thing. "Hey, you didn't have to be so savage _in public_ –"

" _Kagamine Len_."

"We'll take the metro," he responds in a grumpy monotone as another seated traveler approaches with a bowl of instant noodles. I'll never understand how his stomach could still be grumbling after two apples and four eggs. "We head north, on Line Four, before –"

"Len. We _barely_ got on the train. Do you know how we're going to use the metro?"

"You can read, right?" the girl interrupts, looking from me to my twin, and despite herself, blushing a little at Len. I allow myself to go to twin possessiveness hell to try to imagine some kind of comeuppance for her. I can sense Len's face turn (too quickly) from a startled one into a polite and interested one. "The metro station is in the station square. Use the stairs or the elevators to get down, and there will be machines with textual instructions on how to buy tickets. Make sure to choose one way, and don't get a metro card unless you're going to need it again. Follow the crowd and tap your ticket in and out. Try to make it fast, so other people won't get annoyed with you."

I'm trying really hard not to make a sarcastic comment. Len's musical voice saves me, ever delightful and courteous. "Thank you so much, Miss. That's really helpful. Do you want – an apple or something? Fresh produce, our county is famous for it."

I can already visualize Len fumbling with the metro ticket machine for more than ten minutes. I guess I'll have to watch the bags like a hawk as he does all of that, and potentially yell at a few people. But not loud enough to attract station guards and policemen, particularly at this sensitive time of the year.

A young man with a muffler greets us at the end of the road.

"Hello, Len," the stranger says, nodding at my brother. The lines on Len's face smooth out in some kind of relief. My eyebrows rise. Behind the man stands a young woman with long and poorly-dyed blue-green hair. "And Happy New Year. This must be your sister."

"Happy New Year to you all. Name's Rin," I reply stiffly. As much as I'm often introduced as Len's sister, it's still a sore spot. Mostly because Len usually gets to do the important things, and because he likes to leave me out of the decisions and conversations on the important things. Can't say most of that to this man's face, though – not when he seems to be the happily married type. "Thank you for having us."

"Ah, but we're all from the North, and your old man was a good friend of mine. My name is Kaito. This is Miku, my girlfriend." Kaito says _girlfriend_ with a particular shade of bitterness, but by the looks of it, it's not because of relationship problems. _Probably circumstances. Probably not enough money in savings to convince her parents to let him marry her._ "Rin, you'll be staying with Miku."

"Hi, Rin," Miku sings, coming up to wrap her arms around me. At least her embrace is actually warm, and the light in her eyes seems to go beyond just her irises. I blink at the pleasant surprise. "You must be tired. Come, let's get you some food, and settle you down. We didn't have much room, you'll have to forgive us. The economic situation is growing ever more depressing nowadays."

I throw a sad little look at Len. He throws the same look back. Our life in the capital has begun.


End file.
